“There are also conjurers founde even at this day, who bragge of themselves that they can so by inchauntments saddle an horse, that in a fewe houres they will dispatch a very long journey. God at the last will chasten these men with deserved punishment. What straunge things are reported of one Faustus a German, which he did in these our dayes by inchauntments?” _The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus_, which was published in London in 1592, was, as the title-page announces, newly printed and in places amended, so there must have been an earlier edition of which all trace is lost. This was in all likelihood translated from the _editio princeps_ of 1587, but as we are uncertain of its date, it is not impossible that one of the slightly later German editions was used. There occurs in the Stationers’ Registers under the date 28th of February, 1589, the entry of “A ballad of the life and deathe of Doctor FAUSTUS the great Cunngerer. Allowed under the hand of the Bishop of London.” This ballad has been preserved only in later versions of the seventeenth century,[9] and it is not possible to say definitely whether or no it was founded on the English translation of the German Faust book, though that is the most likely theory. There is little doubt that the latter appeared before the ballad. In any case, _The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus_, by Christopher Marlowe, which was in all probability on the stage as early as 1589, was based directly, as is shown by internal evidence, on the English Faust book, and it is unlikely that Marlowe was acquainted with the German version.[10] So even if the ballad was founded on Marlowe’s tragedy, which is very improbable, and not on the English Faust book, the latter must have been published an astonishingly short time after the appearance of the original German _Historia_. The translator is called P. F. _Gent._ (i.e. Gentleman, and not, as some editors have thought, his surname), but in later editions these initials appear as P. R. or P. K. His identity cannot be established, and it is not even possible to estimate definitely his knowledge of German. To quote Logeman; “That P. F.... must have known some German is of course evident from the whole of the translation and more especially from some passages where a smaller light would have blundered. But that his own cannot have shone very brightly is apparent from the number of lesser and greater blunders in which we have caught our translator, and also from the fact that some passages which present considerable difficulties will be found to have been omitted.” We cannot, however, judge a sixteenth-century translator by present-day standards, for he was at liberty to adapt or modify as he listed. For example, where the German original states that Faust blew in the pope’s face, the translator renders _blew_ by _smote_, thus altering the whole sense, and it is doubtful whether the false translation is due to P.